In Crucial Debate, Crazy Lady Tells Old Washington Hack to 'Man Up'

'Twas a riveting night of primetime programming on C-SPAN last night, as Nevada Senate candidates Sharron Angle, a scary twitching dingbat, and Sen. Harry Reid, with all the charisma of a brain tumor, held their only debate. Who "won"?

According to official guy-who-knows-everything in Nevada, Jon Ralston, the winner was Sharron Angle! From what we saw of this historically boring and sad debate, that's probably true, for the reason Ralston lays out:

Let's get the easy part out of the way first:

Sharron Angle won The Big Debate.

Angle won because she looked relatively credible, appearing not to be the Wicked Witch of the West (Christine O'Donnell is the good witch of the Tea Party) and scoring many more rhetorical points. And she won because Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid looked as if he could barely stay on a linear argument, abruptly switching gears and failing to effectively parry or thrust.

Whether the debate affects the outcome - I believe very few Nevadans are undecided - it also perfectly encapsulated the race: An aging senator who has mastered the inside political game but fundamentally does not seem to care about his public role (and is terrible at it) versus an ever-smiling political climber who can deliver message points but sometimes changes her message or denies a previous one even existed.

The future looks bright for Nevada!

In the clip above, we have the consensus YouTube Moment of the debate — basically by default — when Sharron Angle unleashed her very obviously canned retort, "Man up, Harry Reid." People are always telling Harry Reid to do something along these lines, to "man up," "grow a pair," "show balls," whatever. Whatever other gross testicle metaphors there are for this sad, elderly Mormon.

Even though Angle may have scored points by referring to Harry Reid's manhood in such zippy terms, however, it's important to keep in mind that Harry Reid is correct in what he's saying about Social Security.